Taylor Swift appears to share what led to Joe Alwyn’s breakup in new song

The first song Taylor Swift collaborated with her former boyfriend Joe Alwynthe ballad appears on the 2020s Folklore in duet with Good Iver. At the time of the album’s release, Joe was credited as William Bowery, although Taylor confirmed that William and Joe were one during his Disney+ concert film, Folklore: the Long Pond studio sessions.

Taylor revealed that Joe wrote the entire piano part, in addition to singing, “I can see you standing there honey / With his arms around your body / Laughing but the joke ain’t funny at all.” She went on to say that the favorite actor was “always just acting and inventing things and creating things,” but the couple might never have worked together if it wasn’t for not had the shutdown of COVID-19.

“I was like, ‘Hey, this could be really weird, and we could hate this,'” she explained, “because we’re in quarantine and nothing else is going on, could we just trying to see what it’s like if we write this song together?'”

The fruit of their professional collaboration? 2021 Grammys winning album of the year.

“We’re so proud of ‘Exile’,” Taylor said. “All I have to do is dream up lyrics and come up with a heartbreaking, heartbreaking story to write with him.”